


Felt Something Give and Crack

by jenni3penny



Category: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 13:33:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19020970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: Updating and cross-posting from my old LJ fic account. "Jack Rudolph, he thinks, Chairman of NBS, you’re a worthless son of a bitch."





	Felt Something Give and Crack

His fingers like to stray on her stomach, knowing that she’s already too pregnant to go back to being the cute-new-girl-next-door. But then he likes knowing that she’s tainted now, that she’s gonna have to be hard and nasty (she’s gonna have to be a bitch) to get through the press debacle.

But then, that’s how he likes her. It's how he's always liked her, sharp tongued and biting.

Especially when he’s been tainted for years himself and twice as bitter.

***

He’s meticulous after he’s been alone with her, scraping wet fingernails against his skin, digging off the feel of her. He showers the longest and hottest showers, letting his skin sweat out the scent of her, drinking in the hotel water. It’s always hotel water, never the smooth comfortable ebb and flow of a home shower. Always hovering in a hotel bathroom, shoulders bent, waiting for the blow of his wife’s disgust.

Whenever he’s been with Jordan he soaks his mouth in champagne, bourbon, whatever whiskey's nearby before brushing his teeth. He drags his fingers into the bar of soap, leaving rivets that mimic the scrapes he’s left down the brunette’s back.

He always goes home to Marylyn with dry clean skin, caked in regret, thighs still tense and hands still shaking.

***

“Long meeting? ” She says it (over and over again) as if she’s trying to draw a picture of the truth with her breath.

Jack nods into her words, not meeting her eyes but letting a hand fall down her smooth hip. “Too long. I think I might work in the other room for awhile.”

There’s a solid flicker of doubt in her eyes. It's subtly sharp, a crystalline doubt - and it always makes him uneasy. He watches her fiddle with her wedding ring, and it makes him think of Jordan’s tongue running the matching band that suddenly seems too tight on his finger. There’s a distant urge to itch at it, but he knows that the movement would draw his wife’s attention. Instead he looks up at her, passing off a smile that breathes lies.

_Jack Rudolph,_ he thinks, _Chairman of NBS, you’re a worthless son of a bitch._

But instead he tells her “I won’t be long.”

His pretty blonde wife just nods, one hand stretching her hip while the other shudders toward the kitchen counter.

***

Two days later and he leaves his wife in a banquet room, her eyes darkening to a cobalt as he feigns an important phone call. Instead of answering anyone he’s shoving Jordan McDeere into a wall in a darkened conference room, his fingers driving up against her thighs and pushing until he can break through her resolve.

She says the word “Fuck.”  
\- And he can barely think.

She says his name, “Jack.”  
\- And it makes his mouth collapse onto her throat.

His fingers are inside of Jordan’s body, his mouth is running against her jaw, his wife is a few rooms away swallowing her champagne and her despair all from one glass.

Marylyn Rudolph isn’t naïve. She knows her husband is a shark.

She just isn’t sure she wants to know what he’s sinking his teeth (and tongue and fingers) into.

***

She doesn’t sleep with him that night, after his too long shower. Not after he’s damp and clean, wet hair running a line of sweet water against the back of his neck.

Instead she sits on their uncomfortable but undeniably expensive couch, watching too much television and thinking a little too less.

She doesn’t like to think about it anymore. But her hands still scream worry as they flex and stretch against the fabric of the couch that she picked especially for him.

***

Then he’s worried about losing his job.

And Jordan isn’t as important as NBS.

And Marylyn isn’t as important as NBS.

And he wonders who the _real_ mistress is.

***

And Danny Tripp’s words start living on her skin where his mouth used to be.


End file.
